September 25 1924
At Newry Petty Sessions, George McCullough, Carrickcrupper, was fined 5s and costs for riding a horse furiously at Camlough at 9.45pm.
Sergeant O’Rorke said that he followed the defendant to his house, and his only excuse was that he didn’t think the horse could go so fast (Laughter).
Mr McConville, JP – It was qualifying for the Grand National (Laughter).
The defence was that the defendant “didn’t know there was a speed limit for horses”.
Perhaps unknown to some at the time, there were speed limits for horses, mainly in urban areas.
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Six Counties or Nine?
Sir [Richard] Dawson Bates, who made his first appearance on a public platform for a long time, asserted that the unionists made the sacrifice of dropping the three counties – Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan – in 1920.
The Minister of Home Affairs was at that time secretary of the Ulster Unionist Council and hence in the full confidence of his leaders. He, therefore, knows that Sir Edward Carson was offered by the British Government the whole of the nine counties, just as if the people of Cavan, Donegal, and Monaghan were cattle to be disposed of at the nearest market town, but the unionist leader refused them on the ground that he could not guarantee to his successor, Sir James Craig, perpetual ascendancy with them. So Sir Dawson Bates, when he spoke at Omagh, was stating what he knew to be untrue.
The Minister of Home Affairs also repeated with approval the recent declaration of Sir James Craig – “Ulster is not prepared to yield an inch”. Yet the prime minister and his colleagues are members of a government which expressed its willingness to negotiate a mutual agreement on the boundary line, such an agreement, of course, involving the transfer of territory from Northern Ireland to the Free State. When will the Craigite leaders learn to be consistent?
